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Topic: [Answered] Dell Precision PC (Read 152 times)

We are going to use Lumion for rendering of skyscrapers (Arch firm). Just wondering exactly how much PC we should buy?

1.) Does having Multiple Video cards help it render faster?2.) Does having 64GB make a difference? 3.) Do you think the Quadro P4000 is good enough? It has a 10,000 Passmark4.) Do more cores help on the processor?

Just want to make sure we don't undersize OR oversize the PC. I am a noob when it comes to this, so any help is appreciated. Here is what I have come up with so far:

Are the renderings to be mostly exteriors, or also include interiors? And if interiors, do they include extensive room layouts. And for exteriors, will you be requiring to include detailed surrounding buildings or generalized in-context buildings?

To answer your specific questions:

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1.) Does having Multiple Video cards help it render faster?

No. Lumion is only able to make use of the dedicated graphics card assigned to Lumion.

But, you can have a PC with multiple cards, where the other card is used for other software whilst the one assigned for Lumion is busy with a Lumion task. For example you work on some CAD design whilst doing a Lumion render.

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2.) Does having 64GB make a difference?

Not generally for render times. But it does help where there are large and/or complex Scenes and the extra memory helps with overall performance once memory has been used up on the graphics card. You will see more of this mentioned in the articles below.

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3.) Do you think the Quadro P4000 is good enough? It has a 10,000 Passmark

It is OK, and the pricing is quite reasonable these days. But, as in my earlier questions, that would depend on your overall Scene complexity. For example if you are talking about multiple skyscrapers etc.

The are probably other better options such as the GTX/RTX cards that perform much better per $ spend.

If the corporate requirement is only for a Quadro based card then the P5000 with twice the memory, and similar performance may give you a card with greater ability to handle more complex Scenes, and avoid re-investment if project demands change.

The Intel Xeon Gold CPU has a clock rate that exceeds our recommended 4.00GHz clock rate so that is fine.

Other things to make sure of for the PC are a good high quality power supply. We also have an article about those linked in the above articles.

I would suggest more than a single SSD drive. You need at least a 2TB extra drive for project and Scene files, depending on what the storage networking arrangement is in the organisation. The Lumion LS files can range up to 5GB per Scene, so plenty of storage (which is very affordable) is always worthwhile.

You can choose a workstation based PC (one with a Quadro/Xeon) or a general 'gaming' based PC (one with a GTX/RTX or AMD Radeon, and Intel Core CPU) card, or a mix if you want. GTX/RTX cards work equally well with CAD based applications.

If the PC will have a primary use of creating the Scene, and then doing the rendering, then a brand name (such as Dell) with GTX/RTX cards will offer a better price performance.

Working through the requirements for hardware can be quite involved sometimes. So let us know if there's anything else we can provide guidance on.

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They will be both Exterior and Interior. We will also run VR processing on it. On the interiors we will not be doing intensive room layouts (will be a stand alone rendering file if we do). We will include massing of adjacent context only but may merge into a photograph background.'

If you're open to the idea of using an RTX series graphics card, you could get better performance and render speeds in Lumion if you opted for an NVIDIA RTX 2070 or 2080 (both are cheaper than the Quadro P4000).

The RTX 2080 Ti is even faster but might be too expensive.

The caveat is that high-end graphics cards will need a suitable high-quality power supply:

I don't know much about rendering, but we do have another client that they have to let it run overnight to get it done.

With the type of rendering that the client has replied with, how long in your estimate will rendering times take with a P5000? I know it depends on complexity, but just a guesstimate, because let's face it, when it all comes down to it, we are all talking about rendering times.

BTW, you can't get a GTX series in a Precision. They are considered Non-business grade.

If you import even a simple box, it's still possible to add so many Effects that it could take hours to render, say, a 1 minute Clip (1920x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second).

As for general render speeds, we haven't got any render test results on file for P4000 and P5000 graphics cards, so the purchase decision would have to be made based on the number of Passmark points (compared to other high-end graphics cards).

Is the client only allowed to buy Dell PCs?

If so, how about Dell Alienware PCs?

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